FSUIPC6 duplicating my devices - what am I doing wrong?

[Luke Kolin]

I have a setup with a Saitek Yoke, CH Pedals and a Honeycomb throttle. I have switched to using JoyLetters (Y, P and T) instead of numbers because FSUIPC seems to forget about my yoke, or renumber. Today I noticed the same thing, when I plugged in the yoke after starting up p3Dv4. I am enclosing the relevant files.

Why are the devices being listed twice?

Cheers

Luke

FSUIPC6.ini FSUIPC6.JoyScan.csv FSUIPC6.log

[Luke Kolin]

To add, I noticed this because my axis assignments for the throttle quadrant and pedals appeared OK, but the yoke did not. When I opened up the FSUIPC axis assignment dialog and moved the yoke, it said the axis was unassigned.

Cheers!

Luke

[John Dowson]

Why are you continually disconnecting and re-connecting your devices when FSUIPC is running? There is something strange in your ini (your yoke is given the name of your pedals) but its really not with investigating this as I don't know what state this was written in (i.e. what devices were connected)

Connect your devices, start FSUIPC and see if they are working or not, and if not then attach your files and I'll take a look.

[Luke Kolin]

To give you some context, I almost always start the sim with the throttle and pedals connected (they are out of the way and stay connected 100% of the time), then once preflight is done I connect the yoke since it sits in front of my keyboard. When things didn't work, I disconnected and reconnected the yoke to see if that made a difference. It didn't. I believe the log I sent you should be consistent with that action.

I did a slightly different test (for an unrelated reason, I started working on some in-progress code) with all devices connected. Apologies - it uses a different aircraft but that shouldn't make much of a difference. In this case, the yoke worked, but I still get the duplicated devices in the INI. Files attached.

Cheers!

Luke

FSUIPC6.ini FSUIPC6.JoyScan.csv FSUIPC6.log

[John Dowson]

Hi Luke,

3 minutes ago, Luke Kolin said:

In this case, the yoke worked, but I still get the duplicated devices in the INI. Files attached.

There is no duplication. Your devices are there with the letters you have assigned to the device, and also with the joystick ids. FSUIPC needs both. 

John

[Luke Kolin]

Now I'm a little more confused. I tried again, starting with the yoke disconnected. When I attached it, all worked. I then as an experiment disconnected it, then reconnected it to a USB3 port on the front panel. The axis assignments didn't appear to work - after I shut down P3D I get the following in my FSUIPC6.INI:

[JoyNames]
AutoAssignLetters=No
T=Bravo Throttle Quadrant
T.GUID={E2A82AF0-4F72-11EB-8001-444553540000}
P=CH PRO PEDALS USB
P.GUID={8AE67BE0-FD72-11E8-8002-444553540000}
Y=Saitek Pro Flight Yoke
Y.GUID={D2E11750-88B0-11EA-8001-444553540000}
1=Saitek Pro Flight Yoke
1.GUID={8AE67BE0-FD72-11E8-8002-444553540000} 

If FSUIPC needs both, why is only the Yoke duplicated, and why don't the GUIDs match? I assume that's a Windows thing where the GUID is computed from the port as well as the device.

Cheers

Luke

[John Dowson]

Why are you worried about what is written to the ini? It does look strange but its not worth spending time on this if you don't have an issue, especially if you are now starting to plug usb2 devices into usb3 ports. That is known to cause issues with some usb2 devices, so the first thing I would recommend is to not do this an to stick to usb2 ports.

John

[Pete Dowson]

1 hour ago, Luke Kolin said:

If FSUIPC needs both, why is only the Yoke duplicated, and why don't the GUIDs match? I assume that's a Windows thing where the GUID is computed from the port as well as the device.

John is trying to help you but I think you are still missing something.

In your [JoyNames] posted above, nothing is duplicated. For each assigned device there should be two lines -- letter= and letter.GUID=. Those store the details at the time they were found and assigned. 

The entry number= and number.GUID= refers to the details found in the Registry in this session.

In order for FSUIPC to use your assignments for the correct device it matches up the number lines to the letter lines. In your example it cannot do that because the GUID has been changed by Windows because it has seen it as a different device. This may well be to do with you using a different USB port, or it may be down to the vagaries of a USB hub if you are using one. GUIDs can also change with some Windows updates, but that shouldn't happen except on major updates.

If they have changed, then to preserve your assignments just make a copy or the number entries and replace the number by the correct letter, then delete the older lines with the wrong letter.  If the only change is the GUID you only need to do that for the GUID line.

The only way for FSUIPC to make sure it is using the correct assigned device is via the GUIDs which are, after all, intended to be unique assignments for that device. The fact that Windows can change them is very annoying, but can be avoided by NOT unplugging them, and certainly not plugging them into different ports.

Pete

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

Please ignore. Misread the problem.

[Pete Dowson]

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

PMFJI. Is this the same problem I had with USB devices disconnecting and reconnecting? If you remember Pete my problem was solved after I hired a Microsoft Certified Engineer to diagnose and fix my problem.

It was caused by a powered USB hub that was compatible with Windows 7 but not with Windows 10. He recommended a different powered hub and that cured my problem.

Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe the OP can confirm, but I thought he mentioned that he was unplugging them himself?

Pete

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi Pete, that’s why I removed my comment as I noticed he was plugging the yoke in only when the sim was running.

But if Devices are disconnecting and reconnecting during flight then it sounds like the problem I had. 

[Luke Kolin]

6 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

John is trying to help you but I think you are still missing something.

I am certainly missing something. I want to assure both of you that I am not trying to be difficult (my wife says that's because it comes naturally!), rather as I am assigning more and more controller functions through FSUIPC and things aren't behaving as I expect I want to understand the system better to debug it without coming cap in hand here every time.

I assume that the GUID will change depending on the port, which makes sense because it's likely a combination of device properties and the port which one would need to support multiple instances of the same type of device, connected to different USB ports. I'll keep them connected to the same port; I generally do so and I suspect I wasn't looking closely the first time around.

What I am curious about is the quoted section of the INI above, where I had Joysticks T, P, Y and 1. Is that expected? I would expect 3, or 6, but not 4. Again, I am trying to learn more so I can troubleshoot and understand what is normal and abnormal.

Ray, I'm not experiencing a situation where my devices are disconnecting on their own in flight - they've been rock solid all the time. I'm starting to think the first time around I plugged the yoke into the wrong port, but I am absolutely certain when I reconnected it, it went into its usual port. But perhaps the logs will prove my memory wrong. 😄

Cheers!

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 minute ago, Luke Kolin said:

Ray, I'm not experiencing a situation where my devices are disconnecting on their own in flight - they've been rock solid all the time. I'm starting to think the first time around I plugged the yoke into the wrong port, but I am absolutely certain when I reconnected it, it went into its usual port. But perhaps the logs will prove my memory wrong. 😄

Cheers!

Hi Luke, the only indication mine were disconnecting and reconnecting almost immediately in flight was the USB disconnect / reconnect sound being played. If you’re not hearing that (confirmed by entries in the FSUIPC.log then it’s not the problem I was having.

Certainly keeping devices plugged in to the same ports is essential to avoid these problems. Good luck!

[John Dowson]

8 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

What I am curious about is the quoted section of the INI above, where I had Joysticks T, P, Y and 1. Is that expected? I would expect 3, or 6, but not 4. Again, I am trying to learn more so I can troubleshoot and understand what is normal and abnormal.

As I said, it does look strange. But as it was produced when you were re-connecting and changing usb ports on-the-fly, I'm not going to investigate why, sorry. There's just far to much to do for me to investigate such peculiarities. If you have an issue where devices get switched or not recognised when you aren't re-connecting and swapping ports then I will take a look, but as i said, I just can't see any issue here.

 

[Pete Dowson]

10 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

What I am curious about is the quoted section of the INI above, where I had Joysticks T, P, Y and 1. Is that expected? I would expect 3, or 6, but not 4.

The letter entries don't change because they relate to your assignments. So you have used, at one time or another, 3 devices, as described by the T, P and Y lines. The additional lines, the ones starting with numbers, denote the single device found to be connected at the time the JoyNames section was re-written. That device appears to be the Saitek Yoke, but with a mismatching GUID.

So, effectively, in this session (or this stage of the session, because you may have connected more devices later) you have no devices at all currently active in FSUIPC assignments.

I thought I'd explained clearly why there are bother letter= and number= lines. What part of that did you not understand?

Pete

 

[Luke Kolin]

Sorry to bump, but there is definitely something wrong here, or at least non-intuitive.

I am used to not having the yoke plugged in during pre-flight, so I forgot to attach it. After the sim was running for a few minutes, I plugged it in. It was detected, and matched my Joystick letters. Except none of my axis or button assignments were recognized by FSUIPC! They appeared to be visible in the INI file - neither my general button assignments (trim up/down) or aircraft-specific ones (LUA) were visible in FSUIPC assignment, nor were the elevator/aileron axes.

I then restarted the sim, with the yoke attached at startup. Everything worked, and was visible in button/axis assignment. Is something not getting loaded correctly when a device is attached after startup?

Cheers

Luke

FSUIPC6.ini FSUIPC6.log

[Luke Kolin]

The previous message has my INI/LOG files from the first run, here is the second.

 

 

FSUIPC6.ini FSUIPC6.log

[spokes2112]

6 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

After the sim was running for a few minutes, I plugged it in. It was detected, and matched my Joystick letters. Except none of my axis or button assignments were recognized by FSUIPC!

Definitely a non-standard way of using the sim.
When this happens, did you try going to the FSUIPC dialog -->  Axis Assignment Tab --> Click the "Reload all assignments" button?
That should fix it for you without restarting the sim. 1 extra step for your non-standard SOP.

Roman

[John Dowson]

15 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

Except none of my axis or button assignments were recognized by FSUIPC!

Yes, I see the same behavior. I'm not sure if it was always like this, or if its related to a fix added to v6.0.12 to correct a CTD due to a missing device (XBOX 360 controller) mainly on a surface pro. I'll take a look in more detail when I get time, byt probably not for 2-3 weeks. For the time being, you should follow Roman's advice and re-load you assignments if/when you attach a device after FSUIPC6 has started.

John